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CTOnews.com, April 26 (Xinhua) quasars, the brightest and most powerful objects in the universe, were first discovered 60 years ago and are as bright as 1 trillion stars huddled in space the size of the solar system. However, scientists have not known how quasars are produced. Now a new study has uncovered the mystery of the origin of quasars, which are "ignited" by collisions between galaxies.

CTOnews.com Note: rendering of quasar P172: the study, led by scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Hertford, is published in the monthly Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society. They made depth imaging observations using the Isaac Newton telescope on La Palma and found distorted structures on the periphery of galaxies where quasars are located, caused by galactic interactions or collisions.

Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and they also contain large amounts of gas, but these gases are usually far away from them and cannot be swallowed by them. When two galaxies collide, the gas is pushed near the black hole. Before the gas is swallowed by the black hole, it releases a huge amount of energy and forms radiation, which produces the characteristic light of quasars.

This is the first time that a quasar sample of this size has been imaged with such a high sensitivity. By comparing pictures of 48 galaxies with quasars and more than 100 galaxies without quasars, they found that galaxies with quasars are more likely to approach or collide with other galaxies than galaxies without quasars, suggesting that collisions between galaxies can lead to the formation of quasars.

The "ignition" of quasars has a huge impact on the entire galaxy, driving the remaining gas out of the galaxy, making it impossible for the galaxy to form new stars for billions of years.

Professor Clive Tadhunter of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield said: "quasars are one of the most extreme phenomena in the universe, and what we may see is what our own Milky way will look like when it collides with Andromeda in the next 5 billion years. It is very exciting to observe these events and finally understand why they happened, but fortunately, the earth is still a long way from these catastrophic events. "

Quasars are important to astrophysicists because they are so bright that they can send signals over long distances, so they can be used as beacons to explore the early history of the universe. Johnny Pierce, a postdoctoral researcher at Hertford University, explained: "this is an area where scientists all over the world are eager to know more-one of the main scientific motivations of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (James Webb Space Telescope) is to study the earliest galaxies in the universe, and Weber Telescope can detect light from the most distant quasars." These lights were emitted nearly 13 billion years ago. Quasars play a key role in our understanding of the history of the universe and the future of the Milky way. "

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